I was having a Basil Gimlet at the new bar in San Francisco called Rye with a continuing education director, with whom I shared the idea that a way to sell classroom seats would be to auction them off. He replied the idea appalled him, that he believed education should be free.
I replied I though that kind of free is far too expensive, and the auction idea had merit, for say we have 30 seats to auction off, and the dentist who badly wanted into the class bid $250 for the seat and won a place, and son on down to the last seat, which sells for $6 to the nurse's aide who badly wants to take the class. He asked what is all 30 seats went for $250, and the nurses aide never got in. I assured if I sold 30 at $250 I would add more seats until the $6 person got in. It is a hypothesis that needs to be tested.
But in his sense "free" is where economy is ordered to where a basic good, education, is available to everyone, ability to pay of not.
This is a fine sentiment, and it reflects the reality that many worthy people find they cannot afford or otherwise access education. But pause and ask "how come?" We once had free trade in education, with people opening colleges as fast as a need was perceived. We had that with parks, doctor offices and HMOs, housing, food, well, everything. I remember this very well.
But I also remember the state finishing up on say, parks. Once upon a time people would take a big piece of land next to a lake and turn it into a place for families to spend a day picnicing, baseball and swimming, for a fee. The fee was cheap, it covered the overhead, the park owners had a good life, all was well. but the state came along and starting making rules and regs that made it harder to turn a profit, and then started buying up these parks with taxpayer funded bonds, and made the parks "free." Hence every city now has "parks and recreation" departments, which cost so much to run that the fed and state ones are all now fee based, and hefty fees at that, and city ones are not afraid of a fee either.
I think it was Aristotle said the thing that creates it sustains it. So it is with small business. One thing we could do to cut the deficits is to return those parks to their original condition, to people who start parks.
Community colleges has only been around about 50 years. Before that there were some "junior colleges" and very many private voc tech schools. Like parks, the squeezed these schools and then took them over. And now, the cost/benefit is out of control. Before, students could afford to pay cash at these schools and learn a trade, probably less than students pay now. What students paid covered 100% of schools cost, with a profit. But what students pay now is less than 1/5th of the costs, because these schools have so featherbedded their operations. Taxpayers are mulcted for the rest.
We can have free trade in education, well we have it. This is an area where many good things are percolating up. If you love education, it's time to come up with solutions to problems you experience.
The solution is not free stuff, a band aid over a gaping wound. The solution is free from force and fraud. The state uses force to limit who can offer an education. And they use fraud saying "this is what an education costs." The solution is an alternative in which you can afford what education you need, out of your own pocket. Let that with the gaping wound bleed to death. Grow something just instead.
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